Supervised consumption sites still a stigma in Greater Sudbury

Since a volunteer-run, pop-up overdose prevention site started showing up on Louis St. in Sudbury some city residents are concerned about safety, particularly about discarded needles and children seeing the activities going on at the sites.

The City of Greater Sudbury is currently researching the need for a safe consumption site in the community. The pop-up location may be proving that there is a need.

"They're using in public washrooms. Our history has been that most of the folks who are using in the community like this [pop-up version] is because they don't have a safe place to go," said Richard Rainville, executive director of Réseau ACCESS Network.

"They don't have permanent housing or they don't have a place that they can call home," he added.

Rainville is part of the working group that is researching safe injection sites for the city.

He says there is a need for sites like this, however, it's still to early in the research stage to know what a permanent, safe consumption site in Sudbury would look like.

"We recognize too that people need a safe place to use, where they can have access to health care, they can have access to treatment if that's the direction they want to go in," he said.

Rainville says there's still stigma around safe consumption sites, in that many people believe these sites are enabling addicts by supplying things like needles.

"For us, it's always been about safety and health. So if we can provide harm reduction supplies so that we can minimize the number of new HIV and Hep C infections... and whatever else health concern comes from using, then we're ahead of the game," he said.

In Ontario, so far just ten safe consumption sites have been approved and are providing services.

"This service brings people off the street, into care and then helps to connect them to other care and supports that they need," said Brian Lester, executive director of Regional HIV/AIDS Connection in London, Ont. That city opened its first site in February 2018.

"Without a service like this the individuals that we serve would continue to be out on the street still struggling, not connecting the whole range of care that's required to help move someone to wellness," he added.

Lester says they also had to deal with many concerns from residents in the London community, with people worried about loitering, littering and drug trafficking. There was extensive consultation with the community to help ensure all concerns were addressed.

"They wanted to make sure that the service would have an abundance of wraparound supports," he said.

"So while people were coming in and receiving support for safe injection, they could also receive support for addictions treatment, for housing, for mental health supports, HIV, Hep C testing."

"So making sure that people weren't just accessing to inject drugs, even though that's a really important part to ensure folks are doing that safely with our support," Lester said.

"They wanted to see that wraparound, as part of that continuum of care, within this model of service delivery."